Two New Library Resources

The Library would like to highlight two new tools from a couple of our freely accessible resources. Both sound quite interesting and useful, and are fairly user-friendly.

There is a new biomedical image search engine available from the National Library of Medicine. Called Open-I, the database, which is currently in beta form, will initially contain around 600,000 images, but plans are to expand that to over a million. Not only can users access images, but the database can also provide citation information, the outcome statement from the article and the most relevant figure from it. All this extensive indexing has been from full text open access collections such as PubMed Central.

Cases Database is a new, open-access resource from BioMed Central. Containing thousands of peer-reviewed medical case reports from publishers such as Springer, BMJ Group and PubMed Central, it allows clinicians, researchers, and members of the public to search for and compare cases for similarities and trends. The site is easily searchable, and free registration allows the user to create a personalized database to track case reports of interest.